The Mushroom of All Hallow’s Eve

This year, Claire decide to be an Amanita muscaria mushroom for Halloween. We raided the scrap basket, and made over an old umbrella:

Real Amanitas have white stems rather than brown, but Claire didn’t have any warm clothes in white, and we made a bet that the general public wouldn’t notice. And of course we were fortunate that Tom, fresh home from Burning Man, was well-versed in the art of adornment-via-luminescence.

Friends have asked, “Do you think it’s odd that she takes such an interest in toxic/hallucinogenic fungus?” It’s true, Claire’s named her goldfish Amanita, Bolete, and, yes, Psilocybe…But no, I’m not worried.

We just love this holiday. Isn’t it wonderful that Americans do something as beautifully earthy as carving a real live squash, lighting it from within, using actual flame?

4 Comments so far ↓

Fabulous costume–especially if last night’s weather had been like this rainy Monday’s! And I think a childhood interest in fungi bodes well for a kid’s future–Beatrix Potter, after all, was fascinated by mushrooms and painted scientifically precise watercolors of fungi in addition to her whimsical English countryside critters!

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The Tangled Nest celebrates the "new home economics"--an essential twining of home, garden, food, craft, and co-existence with the wild, natural world.
My new book The Urban Bestiary was released in autumn, 2013.
“The challenge of our time is the movement from rural villages to big cities where nature seems gone. Haupt’s brilliant book restores nature in our lives and uplifts that relationship with stories full of wonder, awe and love.” – David Suzuki, host of The Nature of Things